Crazy Nights

Crazy Nights is the fourteenth studio album by American rock band Kiss, recorded from March to June 1987 and released on September 21, 1987, by Mercury worldwide and Vertigo in the UK. This was the second album to feature the line-up of Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Bruce Kulick, and Eric Carr. The album is notable for its pop-metal sound as well as for its use of keyboards and synthesizers, a reflection of popular trends in the commercial rock genre of this time. It was re-released in 1998 as part of the Kiss Remasters series and is the last Kiss album to have been remastered.

A high number of songs from Crazy Nights were performed live during its supporting tour, but during and especially following the tour, most of those songs were dropped and never performed again. Only the song "Crazy Crazy Nights" was retained in their setlist for the Hot in the Shade Tour a couple of years later; it was dropped after that tour, not returning for nearly 20 years until the Sonic Boom Over Europe Tour. This makes the album one of the least represented in the bands' entire catalog throughout their career in their setlists, behind only Music From "The Elder" and Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions.

Kiss took a different approach in creating Crazy Nights, to turn around their image after they had a downfall in their music career due to experimentation of the band's music genre and the loss of two prime members. The band had a lot to prove after their decline of success. Since the time of recording Asylum, Kiss were also under new management representation with Larry Mazur, a consultant.

After the Asylum Tour had ended, Kiss went on a couple of months hiatus due to Gene Simmons' career as an actor and a producer, which made the band seem like his side job instead of his primary job. For Kisstory, Paul Stanley stated that he got tired of Simmons's lack of commitment and one day told him:

We were in the parking lot one day, and I said to Gene, 'Look, you're off doing all these other things while still reaping the benefits of this band—and I'm getting screwed. It's not fair for me to put in this kind of time, while somebody else who is supposed to be my partner, is not.' And Gene looked at me and said,'That's fair.' I could have used Gene's input. But my attitude at that point was that I certainly wasn't going to listen to a guy who's off managing cabaret singers and producing five bands, while I was trying to make an album.

Simmons' temporary departure gave space to Eric Carr and Bruce Kulick. Kulick had four co-writing credits and Carr one, but almost got other material on the album. Stanley had worked with Desmond Child, Diane Warren and Adam Mitchell and co-wrote songs: "Crazy Crazy Nights", "I'll Fight Hell to Hold You" and "When Your Walls Come Down" with Mitchell ("I'll Fight Hell to Hold You" and "When Your Walls Come Down" with Kulick), "Bang Bang You", "My Way" and "Reason to Live" with Child ("My Way" with Bruce Turgon also), and "Turn On the Night" was co-written by Stanley and Warren.

As Kiss' previous two albums had been self-produced, the band felt it needed to bring in an outside producer who would help the album achieve more commercial success. Producer Ron Nevison was hired to produce the album, but because of Nevison's filled schedule, the band had to wait for his schedule to clear. Nevison was chosen in part from his recent commercial success in producing platinum albums for Heart and Ozzy Osbourne. Simmons said for KISStory, "When we started working on Crazy Nights, we looked for someone else to pull the cart, another person to help guide the band... So we hooked up with a producer named Ron Nevison, who[m] Paul had wanted to work with for a while, although I never did." In the "Crazy Nights, it's 25 years strong" KissFAQ interview, Nevison describes the efforts band members put into the album: “Well, this was the only album I did with them. I do know that Gene wasn’t there all the time. Obviously, Bruce was and, to some extent, Eric. Mostly, a majority of the work on that album I did with Bruce and Paul. The bass tracks were cut initially, and Gene was only needed for lead vocals. I must say that most of the time he was there, he was in the back of the studio reading Variety." Although Simmons' participation was low for the album, he did contribute in providing Nevison with 20–25 songs that were potential material for the album, including one song called "I'm Going to Put a Log in Your Fire Place", which was ultimately not used on this or any subsequent albums.

The album was at first called "Who Dares Wins", which was Carr's idea. According to him, "During a photo session, our wardrobe girl had this commando patch lying around with 'Who Dares Wins' on it, and I said, 'Hey, what a great idea for an album title!' Then she brought it over to Paul who said the same thing. We ended up not using it because it didn't look good in print, and it sounded as if no one would understand it." The idea was dropped in June but managed to appear on some Japanese advertisements for the upcoming album. Another title the band thought of was "Condomnation", but as Stanley said, "Well, 'Condomnation' was never really the title. It was just a thought that passed through our minds and gave everyone a chuckle." The recording sessions started in March at One on One Recording Studios in Canoga Park, California, but later continued at Rumbo Recorders, also in Canoga Park, and Can-Am Recorders in Tarzana, California. In June the album was completed, and it was mixed at Can-Am Recorders by Nevison, before being turned over to PolyGram in July.